January 31, 2012 (datelines from January 20 or later) (links correct as of January 30)

Great News-Story Lede:

It was still summer when Jim Hershberger packed up his 22 cats at his homestead in the Mentasta Mountains, hauled them down a mountain on a sled and loaded them into a raft. After a short river trip, he drove 250 miles to Anchorage, where he moved into a friend's shipping container. Hershberger's plan: get supplies, visit the veterans' clinic here, and find a woman. He is no ordinary man, his cats are not ordinary cats, and so far, he hasn't found that extraordinary woman who wants the whole package.

From a review of Rachel Herz's That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, from Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times, 1-22-2012: "To prepare the thick beverage [an allegedly popular Ecuadorean drink called chicha], a group of women put handfuls of corn flour in their mouths, chewed it until it 'vaguely resembled the vomit of an infant,' spit it out into a collective milk jug and repeated the process until all the flour was gone. Then the women capped the jug and buried it the yard to ferment." Herz's assistant reported that a well-aged jug of chicha tastes "warm" and "vinegary." At least. New York Times

From the Annals of Improbable Research's Marc Abrahams, highlighted last week on BoingBoing under "My Favorite Museum Exhibit" . . an actual rectum cut from the corpse of the Bishop of Durham, Thomas Thurlow (1737-1791): "A rectum showing the effects of both haemorrhoids and bowel cancer." This is preserved, floating, in London's Hunterian Museum. Good to know. BoingBoing

The murderer convicted in the famous 1983 "Headless Body in Topless Bar" New York Post headline case made the news last week by requesting parole. (Hell, no, they said.) (Charles Dingle, now 53, had ordered one of his hostages--a mortician--to cut off the head of the man he had shot so the police couldn't trace the bullet.) New York Post

Unforced Error: Here's a short surveillance video of a bank robbery in Parana, Brazil, in which one of the gang shoots himself in the foot. Daily Telegraph (London)

January 30, 2012 (datelines from January 20 or later) (links correct as of January 30)

Port au Prince: If you donated money to Haitian relief, it's fortunate if even a quarter of your dollar has ever found its way to the poor . . two years later. The only exception: the sainted Doctors Without Borders. (Best jobs to have in Haiti: U.S. contractor, Haitian SUV dealer.) World's Greatest Newspaper

South Carolina: In the town of Norway, a trooper pulled over a speeder, who happened to be the mayor, who happened to disagree with the trooper, so when the trooper drove off, the mayor turned on his own blue light, and pulled the trooper over. Nyah- nyha-nyah-nyah-nyah. Associated Press via WIS-TV (Columbia, S.C.)

Frankfort, Ky.: The president of the Kentucky Senate, making a big political (photo-op!) deal out of honoring the Newport Aquarium with a ceremony in the Senate chamber, was then faced with the problem of what to do when the on-loan penguin crapped on the floor. Leadership! Lexington Herald-Leader

Shelby, N.C.: Misty Kullman, 25, was busted for prostitution . . in which she supposedly performed some unnamed act for a guy for . . six bucks. (Bonus: He paid with 3 $1s, a $2, and some coins.) Shelby Star

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.